A New Life At Hogwarts
by Holliberi
Summary: A new girl, Lieta, has joined the school under mysterious circumstances and has been thrown into an unexpected friendship with Harry, Ron and Hermione.


**A New Life At Hogwarts 1: Another New School**

'Calm down Shadow, it's all right, it's all right,' I whispered to my frightened owl, Shadow.

I had just run through the magical barrier at Platform 9 ¾, and needless to say, at the sight of being ploughed through a brick wall the little grey owl had been terrified.

'You don't see anyone else's pets making such a fuss do you?'

But then again, I thought, everyone else's pets have probably been through here before. The ministry official who had taken me here had left me at the entrance to the platform. Miserable old fart, I thought, I didn't see anything wrong with having pink spiky hair. My hand travelled to my now long blonde hair, which was apparently 'More suitable for an educational environment'.

I checked my watch, 3 minutes left until the train departed, I had no friends, no-one to say good-bye to so I dragged my luggage to the nearest carriage and went to get on straight away. Then I realised the problem of trying to get myself, an owl cage complete with terrified owl, and a luggage trunk onto the train by myself, everyone else had help from friends and relatives. Oh well, I thought, I have to do everything else by myself; this'll be no different. Startled, I felt a strong hand on my shoulder, and a friendly guy with messy black hair said,

'Need some help with your luggage there?'

'Erm, sure if that's OK an' everything,' I mumbled in reply, trying to hide my shock at having Harry Potter talk to me. Obviously I'd heard of him, everyone in the wizarding world had, everyone at my old school had talked about him a lot, they all thought I was lucky to be moving to the same school as him. Not that they really cared, I thought.

'Hey Ron, come an help me with, sorry I don't know your name, this girls luggage!' Harry yelled to a lanky red head boy who was waiting further along the platform with a lot of other red heads who I assumed were his family.

They got my luggage onto the train for me, much to my relief, I smiled shyly at them, 'Thanks a lot,'

'No worries,' said the tall boy, 'I'm Ron by the way, Ron Weasley,' He held out his hand for I to shake,

' Hi I'm Lieta'

'You must be new here, I don't remember seeing you here before, oh my name's Harry'

I couldn't stop my eyes from flickering up to his forehead where his messy hair had covered that famous scar,

' Yeah I no, I mean…um…nice to meet you' I stammered, I hadn't meant to be rude but I was still in shock from meeting him, people usually avoided me, and here was the famous Harry Potter and his friend helping me with my things, I was overwhelmed and my eyes began to fill with tears.

'Don't worry about it,' Harry laughed, I'm used to strange reactions when people first meet me, but I must admit I've never brought someone to tears before!'

'I'm really sorry, it's just I'm new here, an then you're so nice to me, an all I can do is stare at your scar, you must be so fed up of people always doing that when they first meet you.'

I looked at the floor, disgusted at myself for messing up another possible friendship. 'No, really it's fine, come on Lieta, you obviously don't know anyone here yet if you're new, so you can share a compartment with me and Ron, and probably our friend Hermione when she gets here,' Harry said kindly, as he took my arm and pulled me towards the nearest empty carriage. We all sat down and the next second a flustered looking girl with bushy brown hair burst in,

'Come ON Ron, or had you forgotten we were meant to be in the prefect's carriage at the front of the train?'

She sighed as she grabbed Ron's arm and started dragging him towards the other end of the train,

' See you later Harry, oh and Lieta, I'll be the one showing you around the castle when we get there, you're in Gryffindor in case you didn't know, the house which was closest to that of your old school in Ireland.'

She gave me a warm welcoming smile as she turned away to go to the prefect's carriage. Wow, I thought, that's one busy girl, but how did she know my name and all that stuff about my old school? O no! How much does she know! If she knows my secret she won't want to be friends with me for long, just like all the others, I thought miserably, and she seemed like such a nice person…

'That was Hermione by the way, she's the only female prefect for Gryffindor so that's how you ended up with her as a guide, me and Ron'll help of course, we wouldn't want you turning into another knowledge hungry bookworm like her ya' know!' Harry said, making himself comfy in the seat across from me.

'She likes reading!' I said in surprise 'because I love reading too, I have to do a lot to catch up with all the school work I miss from constantly changing schools.'

Hopefully I'll manage to stay in this one a bit longer than the last, I thought, as I remembered the mere 3 months I had been at the Irish Wizarding School before having to move again.

'Yeah, Dumbledore, he's our headmaster, told us you'd changed schools a lot, how come you've moved so often?' Harry said.

Great, I thought, this Dumbledore's already gone and told everyone about me, marvellous I thought, just marvellous.

Harry looked at me, concerned, as he saw the horror on my face at what he'd just said, 'Look Dumbledore's only told me, Hermione and Ron, and he only told us because we're the ones who're meant to be showing you around, so if it's something you don't want people to know, you can trust us to keep it to ourselves, don't worry about it, OK?'

Wow, I thought, they weren't prepared to judge me, maybe letting a few people in wouldn't be as bad as I thought…Harry at least seemed like someone I could trust, and Ron and Hermione seemed really nice too. I felt a rush of gratitude to these people who didn't know me at all, yet were prepared to accept me and help me in this new school, my eyes filled again and I struggled to hold back the tears. I felt a gentle hand under my chin, lifting my face up, so I was looking straight at Harry, his kind face smiling reassuringly at me,

'Look if it's something you don't want to talk about that's fine, but trust me, I feel so much better after getting things like these off my chest,'

I took a deep breath and was just about to spill my heart out to him when suddenly Hermione and Ron burst back in.

'We've been told all the passwords so we can come back and sit with you two now,' Hermione said, coming to sit next to me as Ron sat next to Harry,

'So you're the new girl Dumbledore told us about then? I totally forgot about it and then when we saw you getting on the train it just didn't click that you were the same person, sorry' Ron said excitedly as he grinned at you,

'Yeah that's me, thanks for all agreeing to showing me around the school and everything, I really do appreciate it' I said, suddenly shy again at all the attention I was getting.

'Oh don't you worry about that Lieta, we're all more than happy to help you settle in aren't we?' Hermione said, patting me on the knee.

We all sat and talked for about the next hour, getting to know each other better, finding out more about Hogwarts, and hearing first hand accounts of some of the adventures they had had together.

At last Hermione said, 'Come on Lieta, we'd better go and get ready, we'll be there soon.'

'OK, let me just get my stuff,' I grabbed my new robes from my trunk and hurried after Hermione to the changing rooms, leaving Harry and Ron to change in the compartment. When I got to the changing rooms, Hermione pulled me over to a corner and said quietly,

'Listen Lieta, Dumbledore told me, just me, no one else, about what a hard time you've been having at your other schools, with the bullying, the problems with ministry of magic, he told me you wouldn't want anyone to know about what you are because of the problems you've had in the past, but I assure you Lieta, I won't tell anyone, and I mean anyone, what he told me, you can trust me, and hope you can use me as a friend to talk to, a shoulder to cry on and stuff, I'll make sure you get on just fine at this school Lieta, I promise you that.'

I stared at the floor, silently praying it would swallow me up, after a moment I looked up at her warm open face and realised that maybe, being here wasn't going to be as bad as I thought, 'He…he told you I'm…I'm a…


End file.
